CBR18 Book 27: "The Shippers" by Katherine Center

Page count: 320 pages

Rating: 2.5 stars

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book will be out on May 19th.

Josephine "JoJo" Burton runs away from her own wedding, after her childhood best friend, Cooper Watts, shows up unexpectedly from London just as she's about to walk down the aisle, and makes her realise that she really doesn't want to be with her fiancee. The next morning, he's on a plane back to London. JoJo has never been lucky in love. She always chooses the wrong guy, and she always ends up being the dumper. 

Six weeks later, JoJo's sister, Ashley, is getting married on a Caribbean cruise. Her sister's rather vague grasp of pop psychology has made both Ashley and JoJo believe JoJo's terrible relationship is because she's felt abandoned by their father (he works almost non-stop and never seems to be around for anything important) and due to a strange series of events, JoJo must never have found a lasting love because she fixated on her first kiss, and no man has lived up to her expectations since. It just so happens that the man who kissed JoJo when she was ten and he was thirteen is newly divorced and going to be on the cruise as well.

So Ashley orchestrates a truly mental plan where she is going to throw JoJo and her childhood crush together in a ton of matchmaking events, and once JoJo manages to make this man see that she is now a catch, he will fall for her, and all of JoJo's romantic failures will be solved. Along for the ride is poor Connor, who is roped into being JoJo's rather unwilling wingman. He doesn't seem all that enthused about helping JoJo fall in love with another man, but JoJo doesn't really see that her perfect mate might not be this elusive first crush, but rather the BFF she was inseparable from for most of her life. 

This is the second book by Katherine Center that I've read where I'm seriously wondering if all the people praising her are taking crazy pills. I'm starting to think that The Rom-Commers, which I read in 2024, was some sort of fever dream, and I just imagined it was really enjoyable. While this wasn't as bad as The Love Haters (one of my worst reads of last year, which I have now downgraded to 2 stars), it was also mostly a slog to read. I hate romances where I keep wanting one of the protagonists to just run away and escape the other one, and this was very much the case here. 

What I liked (it's not a terribly long list):

- Cooper is really an amazing guy, pretty much in every way. Except for his dreadful taste in love interests. He's not just in another league from JoJo (still hate that nickname), he's pretty much in his own universe from her. I can't even find the words to describe how much too good for her he is. He should have stayed in London, doing cool things and finding someone worth his time and efforts. 

- While being stuck on a cruise ship for a wedding sounds like an utter nightmare to me, it was an interesting way of doing forced proximity. 

- The fact that JoJo's daddy issues pretty much stemmed from a massive misunderstanding, and that she realised he was a really good guy and helped him get back together with her mum. Very nice twist to have the deadbeat dad actually be a secretly really good guy, who was just terrible at advocating for himself, or apparently communicating in ANY way with his family (getting annoyed at the author again now). As it turns out, the one who should have been having daddy issues is Cooper, but saying more would be spoiling. 

- JoJo's family mostly seemed really nice, even though Ashley seemed like a pretty awful friend for putting all her single friends through some sort of matchmaking Olympics on board the ship. 

What I did NOT like:

- Our female protagonist. She is extremely annoying and clueless to the point where I could no longer suspend my disbelief. I can totally see how someone with an advanced degree in mathematics and a supposed genius-level IQ could be clueless enough about personal matters to be utterly AWFUL at reading people. I can even be persuaded that she seemed to think it was a good idea to marry the dude she is about to marry at the start of the book. But once she is on the boat, going through with her utterly moronic plan of "conquering" her childhood crush, even when it becomes painfully obvious that he's dull, not really interested in her and utterly wrong for her, while a gorgeous, thoughtful, caring, funny, musically talented and all-around great guy is doing everything but literally spelling out his feelings. I wanted to throw my e-reader across the room at how self-centred and oblivious she was. 

- JoJo's belief that she was cursed. I repeat, she has an advanced degree in maths, and we are told she has a genius-level IQ, but she would rather believe that she is cursed than the fact that SHE is the common denominator in all of her failed relationships. None of them worked out because you are the WORST, JoJo. 

- JoJo's judgment is seriously bafflingly bad. In any given situation, she will pick the absolute worst option to try to solve things, and end up confused and sulky because yet again she's messed her life up more.

- JoJo appears to have no self-respect or free will whatsoever. She stays in a fairly unsatisfying relationship for three years before emotionally blackmailing her so-called perfect boyfriend into proposing. Then she sits around for another four years before finally getting to her wedding, where she has apparently let the groom's family decide absolutely everything, without any input from her, up to and including the ill-fitting wedding dress she has to wear. Then her sister makes some sort of insane plan for how she's going to become "uncursed". JoJo squeezes herself into too-tight outfits to look sexy and tortures herself with monstrously uncomfortable shoes, and never once does JoJo tell her sister to f*ck off with her idiotic suggestions. She appears to have no actual agency or personal wishes; she just lets other people tell her what to do. 

- While the page count is 320 pages, because of the pacing and the fact that I deeply disliked the heroine, this book felt interminably long. 

When I saw this ARC available for request, I had hoped that The Love Haters was a rare fluke in the bibliography of Ms. Centre. So I asked for this one to give her another chance. Next year, I think I need to tell myself that I have now let myself be fooled twice, and need to try to avoid disappointment by letting it happen a third time. I won't be requesting any more ARCs from this author. 

Judging a book by its cover: I don't know who designed this cover, but at least to my eyes, the red, orange and shock pink all clash with each other, and the sort of turquoise blue of the dude's shirt and the lifebuoy ring are not helping. I am not a fan of this; it's giving me a headache. Although it may warn people away from the book, which I'm starting to think might be a good thing. Having browsed Goodreads, I also see that on the UK cover, the woman (who is clearly supposed to be JoJo) is wearing a dark blue dress and flowy scarf, which while not great (there is still that background) would be SO much better. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 54: "The Wedding Con" by Janine Amesta

Page count: 251 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Thank you to Janine Amesta and Tule Publishing for this ARC. My opinions are my own.

This is the second book in the Love is in the Air series, but this book can be read as a standalone as well. If you prefer to start at the beginning, the first one is Love at First Flight (which I literally, just NOW, as I was writing this, realised is a pun on "love at first sight". Now I feel stupid.)

Naomi Moreno wants to help her stubborn and independent older sister contribute to the family business, High Desert Tours, but struggles to get her sister to listen and take her seriously. She feels guilty for the tight financial situation the family is in, since she saw her father get persuaded to poor decisions and investments via YouTube influencers, ending with the business deeply in debt when he suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. She's sure that their hot air balloon company could be the perfect fit for certain couples looking for an unusual wedding venue, and her sister Selah reluctantly agrees to give her a chance, if she can work out a pricing proposal and find some interested customers. 

Boone Reyes has lived an itinerant life and had to do some shady things in the past to stay alive, thanks to his unscrupulous con man father. He's rarely stayed in one place for very long. The last few years, working for the Moreno family, is the exception, and he's hoping he might be able to find additional work as a rock climbing instructor. He spends his days trying to charm and impress Naomi, the only woman in the Moreno family who refuses to warm up to him.

To have a chance to land a job as a rock climbing instructor, Boone needs to prove that he can actually properly instruct someone, not just solo climb. He makes a deal with Naomi that if she will let him teach her rock climbing, he'll help her find clients who want to get married in a hot air balloon. With a con artist father, Boone knows when to turn on the charm and be persuasive (one of the reasons Naomi distrusts him and thinks he has a hidden agenda) and he would much rather use his powers of persuasion for good, than for tricking people.

It turns out that the way to Naomi's heart is honesty and vulnerability. By sharing information about himself and his life, even when some of the details are less than rosy, Boone gradually wins Naomi's trust. There's been an attraction between them pretty much since Boone was hired, but Naomi has refused to acknowledge how much she likes him, because she's worried about falling into the same traps that her father did. When she discovers that Boone can be truthful, even when the stories he tells are sometimes rather embarrassing, she quickly warms up to him.

Complicating matters massively for our hero, Boone's father is recently out of jail, and insists on coming to crash with his son. Despite his years in prison, Boone's dad is showing absolutely no signs of wanting to become a better person and turn over a new leaf, no, he's already looking for his next score, and the Moreno women look like the perfect marks in his next scheme. Thankfully, while Naomi's mother may be too friendly and trusting, especially to anyone related to Boone, she and her sisters have learned the hard way that they need to be vigilant and do their best to drive him off. Unfortunately, for a while at least, Boone's father manages to persuade Naomi that his son has been working a long con on them, and tries to sabotage everything Boone has managed to build with Naomi and the other Morenos. Can Boone convince the prickly Naomi that he's not a fraud and a scammer, like his deadbeat dad, or will their romance die before it's even had a chance to properly begin?

15th of September to 15th of October is Hispanic Heritage month in the USA, and reading and promoting a book by a Latina author seems like a good way to start this month. I hadn't really heard of Janine Amesta before I was lucky enough to get an ARC for her previous book, but now that I have, I was actively on the look-out for a chance to read this book before it was officially released, and I am so happy I was granted another ARC. While this book works fine as a standalone, some of the underlying tensions and issues were established in the first book, and the family dynamics of the Moreno women, who are all processing their grief in different ways feel richer and more established if you've read eldest sister Selah's book first. 

A lot of romance heroes nowadays are likened to golden retrievers, but as my friend Rochelle pointed out in her review, Boone is clearly a stray cat who shows up on your doorstep, begging for some food and affection, and then just refuses to leave again, once he's been fed that first time. Naomi's reasons for distrusting and being sceptical of Boone and his motives are well established and perfectly understandable. She reads a lot of romance, and is worried that Boone is a George Wickham, all handsomeness, charm and glib words on the surface hiding a scheming, self-serving and unscrupulous personality. As the reader discovers, had Boone fallen in with his father's plans and become as big a con artist as him, Naomi would be absolutely right about him. But Boone doesn't want to decieve and trick people, he wants to be a good person with a place to belong, even though he doesn't really believe he's deserving of anything positive because of his past misdeeds, helping his father (the only stable adult in his life).

Boone works hard for the Morenos, lives in a trailer and tries to get extra work as a rock climbing instructor. He's been pining for Naomi for years, and while it takes him a while to realise just how irredeemable his father actually is, and unfortunately for Boone, he doesn't really care about anything but himself, it takes him quite a while to get over his father's gaslighting and have a proper confrontation with him. He believes himself to be unworthy of the love of Naomi, her mother and sisters, and doesn't realise that while Naomi is initially fooled by Boone's dad, because of her many insecurities, the rest of the Moreno family are firmly in his corner, and feel that his actions while working for them has proven that he's a good man. It takes Naomi a bit longer to accept the truth, but once she does, and realises she's been unfairly judging him and hurt him in the process, she works her hardest to prove to him that he really does have a home with her.

Both of Amesta's books that I've read so far are about ordinary, hard-working people just wanting to make the best of their world. There are no movie stars, no celebrities, no billionaires here. They have everyday problems and everyday lives, and are just nice to spend time with on the page. I'm very much looking forward to reading about the youngest Moreno sister's romance in the third book of this trilogy.

Judging a book by its cover:

It's a very sweet cover and I like the wedding decorated hot air balloon in the background, but Naomi dyes her hair pink early on in this book, and is still described with pink hair when she actually gets married. So I would have been happier if she had pink hair in the cover image. It's a minor niggle, but I have it nevertheless.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 52: "Problematic Summer Romance" by Ali Hazelwood

Page count: 416 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Nowhere Book Bingo 2025: A book set on vacation

Official plot summary (because it's better than anything I could come up with):

Maya Killgore is twenty-three and still in the process of figuring out her life.

Conor Harkness is thirty-eight, and Maya cannot stop thinking about him.

It’s such a cliché, it almost makes her heart implode: older man and younger woman; successful biotech guy and struggling grad student; brother’s best friend and the girl he never even knew existed. As Conor loves to remind her, the power dynamic is too imbalanced. Any relationship between them would be problematic in too many ways to count, and Maya should just get over him. After all, he has made it clear that he wants her gone from his life.

But not everything is as it seems—and clichés sometimes become plot twists.

When Maya’s brother decides to get married in Taormina, she and Conor end up stuck together in a romantic Sicilian villa for over a week. There, on the beautiful Ionian coast, between ancient ruins, delicious foods, and natural caves, Maya realizes that Conor might be hiding something from her. And as the destination wedding begins to erupt out of control, she decides that a summer fling might be just what she needs—even if it’s a problematic one.

Maya and Conor were both secondary, supporting characters in Not in Love, one of my favourite Hazelwood books to date. So when I realised that not only was Hazelwood in 2025 generously blessing her readers with Deep End, and later this year, the sequel to her paranormal romance, Bride, but a third romance, and an unexpected follow-up to a book I love, I was beside myself with joy. Itty bitty spoiler - there is, in fact, a cameo of Scarlett and Lucas from Deep End in this book, because Ali Hazelwood loves her readers and knows we eat that sh*t up. 

This book came out at the end of May, and as far as I can tell, Hazelwood did very little promo for it, compared to some of her other releases. Nevertheless, it ended up becoming a bestseller because her readers are now legion, and who can resist an age gap romance with a title like this one? Nature even helped out a little bit, with a volcanic eruption on Mount Etna about a week after the book's release (if you have read the book, you know why this is relevant). 

An age gap romance can be a tricky proposition, but as soon as I worked out that the actual age gap was only 15 years, and Maya was fully adult the first time she really considered Conor in any romantic way whatsoever, I frankly couldn't see what all the fuss was about. One of my favourite romance novels of all time, What I Did for a Duke by Julie Anne Long, has a bigger age gap between the protagonists. It's not like the age difference between Maya and Conor is anything like that between so many ageing male celebrities and their child brides who are young enough to be their granddaughters. And it's not like the potentially squicky issue isn't addressed right there in the title of the novel.

This book alternates between the present day, with Rue and Eli's rapidly approaching nuptials in Cicily (although there is a string of complications long enough for anyone to wonder if their wedding is cursed), where things are awkward and tense between Maya and Conor. Interspersed among these chapters are ones set a few years in the past, when the seeds of their romance were sown, so to speak, while Maya was a student in Edinburgh and Conor showed up unexpectedly to help her.

Was this one of Hazelwood's best novels? No, but neither was it one of her worst (I don't actually think she has any bad ones, just great and slightly less great ones). Getting to see Rue and Eli again was a happy bonus, and while you don't need to have read their romance to fully get this book, it is probably an even more satisfying read if you have. It also made me really want to visit the south of Italy and/or Sicily. The setting and the food described seemed amazing. 

Judging a book by its cover: So many of Hazelwood's covers feature the main characters in some sort of embrace. Much as I think many of them are very cute, I love this one so much more. It perfectly captures both the holiday vibe in the book, as well as gives you an impression of both protagonists, even though you can only see their legs. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 30: "Along Came Amor" by Alexis Daria

Page count: 512 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

CBR17 Pie Chart Challenge: Diversity

Thank you to Netgalley and Avon for this ARC. My opinions are my own.

Ava is nursing her hurt feelings over the dissolution of her marriage in a hotel bar, when a handsome man approaches and offers to make her a better drink than the one she currently has (she made a face when sipping it). The man clearly has bartending experience, and after a brief conversation, Ava discovers that the charming man in fact owns the hotel she's currently in (not to mention a whole chain of them). Ava decides to do something entirely out of character for her, and agrees to a one night stand with Roman, which turns out to be a lot more memorable than either of them expected.

Roman Vasquez barely ever takes time off; he lives and breathes for his business empire, always striving for more and better. Yet the chance meeting with the downcast, but lovely Ava at the bar makes him uncharacteristically order his assistant to clear his entire schedule, and while they agreed it was to be a one-time thing, the two continue to meet up every few months or so, when Ava is feeling especially upset and dejected. At first, Roman doesn't mind being this beautiful woman's comfort hookup, but with every new meeting, he begins to fall more and more, and wants to pursue a proper relationship with Ava. He's always been hard-working and goal-oriented, and now his goal is to win Ava.

Ava has a very meddling family with a lot of strong opinions, and was basically made to feel like it was her fault that her husband cheated and that their marriage dissolved. She therefore wants none of her friends and family to find out about Roman, to avoid endless speculation and mean-spirited gossip about a relationship she doesn't see leading to a long-term future anyway. So it complicates matters rather a lot when she discovers that Roman is the best man at her cousin Jasmine's upcoming wedding (where Ava is the Maid of Honour). How is she going to keep their hook-ups secret when she can barely keep her eyes and hands off him every time he is near, and now they have to spend a lot of time together wedding planning?

This is only the second Alexis Daria novel that I've read, the first one being Take the Lead, a reworking of her debut novel. That was a perfectly good read (although I remember very little about the plot a year later), but it took me much longer to get through than many romances, since the plot and characterisation weren't really grabbing me. That is certainly not the case in this book. Eva is a really interesting protagonist, Roman is an excellent foil for her, and from their first meeting, I just wanted to keep reading to see what would happen next. 

Some of the supporting characters in this story are the couples from the previous two books in the Primas of Power trilogy (both of which I own, but haven't gotten round to reading yet). While Ava's cousins Jasmine and Michelle are ride or die for her and would support her through anything, it's quite obvious that most of Ava's family are really toxic and constantly make her feel like a failure. In contrast, Roman's mother and sister (who both live with him in his swanky apartment, at his insistence) are extremely supportive of him - they just want him to find a better work-life balance (in fact, get any sort of life outside of work) and do so much for them. 

I read this book after having finished some books that were either frustrating and rather boring or merely fine. So it's possible that my very high rating of this is because it was just so delightful to find an entertaining and well-written book as a palate cleanser to those other ones. I'm pretty sure that if I re-read it, I'll stand by my rating, though. It's not a full five stars (Ava takes a bit too long to wake up and realise that Roman is perfect for her), but this book balances some heavy themes and a lot of emotional topics in a good way. It's rare to find an author who can skillfully balance genuine emotion and romance, with cringeworthy embarrassment, cathartic long-overdue emotional confrontations with overbearing family, and still manage to include more than one laugh-out-loud moment. Yet in the final chapters of this book, Daria manages to do just that. 

That excellent balance also makes it possible for me to ignore the "baby in the epilogue" of it all (much easier to do now that I'm no longer involuntarily childless). This book seems to have more endings than the movie version of Return of the King, but I guess that might be natural, since this book finishes up Daria's entire Primas of Power trilogy, and it doesn't just show us Ava and Roman's continued happiness, but what happens to the other two couples, as well. Now that I've read and thoroughly enjoyed this, I'm absolutely going to add the previous two books in the series to my reading list over the summer. 

Judging a book by its cover: I really like the style of the covers for this trilogy, making the covers look like old-time movie posters. They're all distinct and suitable for the book in question, but eye-catching with bold colours, and the couple front and centre in a passionate embrace. I'm so very ready for the drawn covers to move on to something else, but these are better than a lot of other romances out there right now. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 17: "The Wedding Party" by Jasmine Guillory

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Buzzword Title Challenge 25: Event

Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Food or drink

Maddie and Theo are both best friends with Alexa (from The Wedding Date). Despite what the blurb tries to tell you, they are not enemies, they just dislike each other because of some unfortunate first impressions. Maddie thinks Theo is a pompous nerd who looks down on her for her career choice, while Theo thinks Maddie is shallow, fashion-obsessed and mean. After a night out, they drunkenly kiss each other and end up having sex, and very soon they are hooking up every chance they get (including making really bad excuses to see each other). They don't want anyone to find out about it, however, because they don't want Alexa to start match-making while she's busy planning her own wedding. Both agree that it's a temporary thing that will come to a natural end once Alexa's wedding is over, and they stop having to spend so much time together (they are both in the wedding party).

Both characters are absolute idiots when it comes to being honest with themselves about their feelings, and neither of them wants to confess their growing affection for the other, scared that because of their initial antipathy, the other one will reject them. So they keep spending their evenings together, eating SO MUCH takeaway pizza (seriously, it's ridiculous) and ending up in bed together. They are sure they are being very sneaky and that no one suspects a thing, when in fact, every single person who spends time with them (including Alexa) is fully aware of what is going on, and just waiting for them to mutually realise that they are perfect for one another. 

This was a fun read and reminded me that there are a bunch of books in this series that I own, but haven't ever got around to reading. This is why reading challenges are good - they force me to look through my TBR and my many, many owned, but unread books to rediscover stuff I bought years and years ago and completely forgot because there are always so many other shiny books out there to distract me. 

Judging a book by its cover: I really wish they'd used black for the whole title, instead of yellow for part of it, since the yellow against the bright purple background is much harder to read this way. Otherwise, it's a fairly unobjectionable cover. It features the protagonists drinking champagne, so I could use it for my reading challenge. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 56: "Three Reasons to Run" by Jackie Lau

Page count: 241 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

Smart Bitches Summer Bingo: Free Space

Disclaimer: This was an ARC from the author, it has not affected my review in any way. 

Leo Mok (younger brother of Max, from Four Weddings to Fall in Love) is late for his cousin Carl's wedding because he got a speeding ticket. He's not exactly thrilled to be going, since he's had a crush on the bride since he first saw her at a family gathering two years ago. He's about to leave his car when the bride comes running out of the church and nearly crashes into him. She implores him to help her get out of there, and Leo wouldn't hesitate to help a woman in distress, even if he wasn't infatuated with her. He takes her to buy ice cream and helps her fetch her things from her apartment before anyone comes home. 

Yvonne Siu is a people pleaser and has always tried to be the perfect daughter and later girlfriend. She could never understand why her older sister was always in conflict with her parents and eventually rebelled and cut all contact with them. She's been in a relationship with Carl for five years, and while she hasn't really felt appreciated or satisfied for a long time, she invested a lot of time and effort into the relationship. She even forgives Carl for cheating on her. However, as she is walking up the aisle, she just can't make herself marry him. She flees and is deeply grateful to Leo for helping her escape the awkward scene of her wedding. 

Even if Leo hadn't been present in the parking lot as Yvonne came storming out of the church, she would have had an escape available. Shortly before the ceremony, Yvonne spoke to Leo's mother, who could tell she was having doubts and gave Yvonne her car keys just in case. Once Yvonne clears out her things from the apartment she shares with her now ex-fiancée, Leo's parents offer to let her stay with them at their house until she can find a place of her own. So Yvonne ends up crashing temporarily in Leo's old bedroom. 

While Leo tries to keep his distance, he is completely unable to say no every time Yvonne asks for help, or to hang out, and later, because she's never really had a satisfying sexual experience, to "show her a good time". Leo knows that he shouldn't want his cousin's ex, and Yvonne has a lot of work she needs to do before she's certain she's ready for anything new. Can there ever be anything more between them than friendship and casual sex?

Jackie Lau has written quite a few novels where the couple's HEA (happily ever after) doesn't involve becoming parents. When they reconnect after she runs from her wedding, Yvonne discovers that her sister is heavily pregnant. Once her nephew is born, Yvonne is happy to spend time with the baby, but it also confirms to her that she doesn't actually want children of her own. Running away from her own wedding shakes up Yvonne's life drastically, and she's left with a lot of time to think and reconsider her wants and priorities for her future. It becomes very clear to her that being a mother is not part of that future. 

Her thoughts on motherhood are not the only things that Yvonne needs to consider. Having been a "good girl" her entire life, trying to be the perfect daughter who never caused any trouble, and later the perfect girlfriend and fiancée, it's only after leaving her Carl that she realises how unhappy she was. Seeing her sister, entirely estranged from their parents, so happy with her partner and seeing Leo's parents, many years married, also in a healthy, functioning relationship, she comes to understand how toxic the situation she grew up in was, and how controlling and demanding her father was. Her ex wasn't emotionally abusive, like her dad, but he did take her for granted and never seemed interested in or cared about what Yvonne liked, wanted or needed.

Leo is quiet and rather taciturn and doesn't think he's in any way good enough for Yvonne. He's also so smitten that despite knowing it's a bad idea, he still takes every chance to spend more time with her. He takes care of her favourite plan, he will happily hang out with her, or go for a meal with her, and he ends up going on her honeymoon with her. Agreeing to casual sex so she finally discovers what a satisfying sex life is like? He isn't going to say no to that. He has to come to terms with the fact that while his life might seem quiet and boring next to those of his siblings, he's a kind, helpful and very thoughtful person, and wanting what is best for the person you love isn't a bad quality in a partner.

While I liked this, it wasn't one of my favourite of Lau's books. She doesn't write bad books, but this one felt 'just fine' instead of 'really great' if that makes sense? Your mileage may vary. 

Judging a book by its cover: Maybe not the most exciting of covers, but the wedding bouquet is very pretty and the flowers and the pastel colours give a good indication of the book's content (a wedding will be involved, it's unlikely to be a very angsty read). 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR16 Book 38: "Husband Material" by Alexis Hall

Page count: 423 pages

Audio book length: 13 hrs 33 mins

Rating: 4 stars

CBR16 Bingo: Rings (a whole bunch of rings being exchanged in this book)

In Boyfriend Material, Luc and Oliver met, pretended to date for a number of reasons, pretended to be in love, fell in love, broke up, and then decided to actually date for real. By the time this book starts, they have been together for a good while (I want to say at least a year?) and as is often the case at a certain age of your life, they keep being invited to weddings. All this focus on romance and matrimony and people committing to spending their lives together. Luc begins to wonder if he and Oliver shouldn't also get married.

The structure of this book is loosely based on classic rom-com Four Weddings and a Funeral. I don't even want to go into detail about which people are getting married, because discovering that is part of the fun of the book. I can also reveal to potentially axious readers that the death that leads to the funeral is not for any of the main supporting cast (I was worried when reading the book), but does affect several of the characters. 

I have labelled this contemporary romance, even though the plot doesn't concern itself with a couple meeting, falling in love and working their way to the inevitable HEA or HFN. That was the previous book. This is a follow-up, but it is also a contemporary novel, with a central theme of romance. The ending is not in any way unhappy, and the story wouldn't work if one removed the central romance from it - hence I get to call it a contemporary romance, even if it's more of a 'What do they do after the HEA/HFN?' 

When this came out, there were a bunch of reviews saying that the tone was a lot more serious and depressing than in Boyfriend Material and a lot of people seemed to be disappointed in it. I was not in a place emotionally to be disappointed by the book, so kind of forgot about it even though I'd pre-ordered it. Then, a few months ago, my friend Ashley read a bunch of Alexis Hall books and did a vlog about it. She reminded me that this book existed, and furthermore, she was very positive about it. So back onto my soon to be read TBR it went and it seemed like a perfect fit to read in June, during Pride, since there's a bunch of queer characters in it, and the author is gay. 

Having also acquired it in an audiobook sale on Audible at some point, I mostly listened to this in audiobook while cycling to and from work. Joe Jameson also narrated Boyfriend Material and does an excellent job repeating his performance here. He has very distinct voices for most of the rather sprawling cast, and now there is no one else I would like to hear reading to me about these weirdos.

I will say, that being determined to structure it with four weddings and a funeral and giving each of the sections almost equal attention means that the book does drag on in places, and it's longer than it needed to be. It was still a very entertaining read, and I'm now very curious about another of the books Ashley talked about, 10 Things That Never Happened.

Judging a book by its cover: Very much in the style of the first book, this is a cute cover that suits the book. I don't really have much else to say about it. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 25: "Delilah Green Doesn't Care" by Ashley Herring Blake

Page count: 375 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Nowhere Book Bingo: Book with a LGBTQIA+ author and main character

CBR16 Sweet Books: New (author and series)

CBR16 Book Bingo: Pride

Delilah Green grew up in Bright Falls, in the care of her wealthy, but emotionally cold stepmother (after her father died), and never managed to forge a connection to her always perfect stepsister Astrid either. Astrid had her two best friends, Claire and Iris, and more than once Delilah overheard them saying mean things about her. When she got the chance, she left Bright Falls for New York and has rarely been back since. She lives for her photography, and after many years, her career finally seems to be taking off. 

But now Astrid is getting married and insists on having Delilah be the wedding photographer. The promise of a very large paycheck and heaping on a fair amount of emotional blackmail means Delilah can't really say no. Imagine her surprise, when on her first night back, she's propositioned at the local bar by none other than Astrid's BFF Claire, who doesn't even recognise Delilah at first. Suddenly the next few weeks before the wedding are looking more entertaining, and if she manages to piss off Astrid by seducing her friend, so much the better. 

Claire Sutherland has been a single mother for most of her eleven-year-old daughter's life. The girl's father has proven unreliable and is more often than not away. So Claire runs the Bright Falls bookstore and tries to provide stability and order to both her daughter's and her own life. She doesn't like the man her best friend is engaged to, and really needs to get laid. So she takes a challenge from her friend Iris to approach an interesting-looking woman at the bar, and is rather shocked when she realises it's Delilah that she's hit on. 

While Claire tries to resist Delilah, spending more time with her as an adult shows Claire that while they grew up in the same town, and Claire and Iris spent a lot of time in the same house as Delilah and Astrid, they never really knew Delilah, and certainly not who she has made herself into after she left town. Since the guy Astrid is marrying is absolutely awful, Claire, Iris and Delilah agree to team up to make Astrid come to her senses and call off the wedding, which obviously means spending more time together during the wedding preparations. What's the harm in spending some alone time with Delilah at night as well? 

I'm not sure why it took me so long to read this book. I'd heard great things about it on so many corners of the internet. As so often happens, I bought it in an e-book sale and then got distracted by something else tempting and shining on my insurmountable TBR-list. The Nowhere Book Bingo gave me an excuse to read the book, and thanks to my complete inability to keep up with my review backlog, I'm now also able to use it to fulfil the "Pride" square for the Cannonball Read 16 Bingo card as well. Being slow sometimes pays off. 

I really liked most things about this book, and probably Claire most of all. She's a hard-working single mother, who had a kid before she was really ready for it, with a man who certainly wasn't ready for fatherhood or commitment. She runs a bookstore and doesn't want to start anything that might ruin the stability of her daughter's life. She's kind and loyal, and once Delilah actually lets her in a bit, she understands how much she, Astrid and Iris misunderstood Delilah when they were growing up. 

Delilah has not had an easy life and is definitely prickly and slow to trust because of it. Having lost both her biological parents at an early age, with the only parental figure left to her being Astrid's cold and callous mother, she has developed a "leave them before they can leave you" attitude, and all her sexual conquests are purely of a temporary nature (usually only one-night-stands). Having worked hard to become a recognised photographer, she is presented with an excellent career opportunity at the start of this book, which is complicated by her promise to Astrid to photograph the upcoming wedding.

Astrid initially seems like a perfectionist ice queen, but as the story progresses, it becomes clear that the rejection Delilah felt growing up wasn't necessarily one-way. Delilah was just too caught up in her own feelings to notice Astrid's attempts at reaching out to her stepsister, and if she'd been a bit more willing to speak to her sister as an adult, a lot of the negative feelings between them could have been resolved with a conversation or two.

The secondary plot of this novel is all about how Delilah, Claire and Iris decide to team up to show Astrid what an absolute douché-canoe her fiancé is, through a series of elaborate plots. As the second book in the series seems to have Astrid finding love with someone NOT her horrible boyfriend in this one, I was pretty sure their scheme would probably meet with success eventually. 

I really liked this, but didn't feel I could give it a full five stars, mainly because of how much of the plot could have been resolved by some frank conversations between some of the characters, be it Delilah and Claire or Delilah and Astrid. Situations like that always frustrate me. Nevertheless, this was a really enjoyable book, and I'm looking forward to reading Astrid and Iris' stories at a future date. 

Judging a book by its cover: In a world with so many dreadful book covers, Leni Kaufman keeps knocking it out of the park, and she always draws really good representations of the actual characters in the book. Delilah and Claire both look absolutely phenomenal here and the hand-holding is so cute. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR15 Book 83: "Forget Me Not" by Julie Soto

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Ama Torres is an excellent wedding planner, who really gives her all to make sure the weddings she arranges go off without a hitch. However, personally, she doesn't believe in marriage or in relationships that really last a lifetime. Probably because her mother has been married so many times (Ama has arranged a lot of her weddings). Now she has a whole host of former step-siblings, some of which she works with, others who she can rope in when she needs a favour. Despite Ama usually doing fairly small, intimate weddings, she is contracted to arrange the wedding of a famous Instagram star (a woman Ama sees as a personal role model). It will be Ama's biggest job yet, and her former employer is making things difficult by booking up a lot of the available vendors on the date in question.

Another complication is that the brides have contracted Elliot Bloom to do the flowers for the wedding. Ama and Elliot have a history - which ended when Ama broke Elliot's heart several years previous. Now she's going to have to arrange the biggest, most high-profile wedding of her career while working closely with a man who most likely hates her. 

Romances starring commitment-phobic wedding planners seem to be a subgenre of its own. Ama (not going to tell you her full name, but it's a great one) has a lot of issues with relationships, mainly due to her mother's many many marriages. She prefers simple flings until she meets Elliot, who is the complete opposite. When Elliot falls for someone, it is forever - which doesn't work out so well for either of them.

This is a really fun second chance romance, where about half of the story is told in flashbacks, so we see the beginning of Ama and Elliot's relationship, and discover what finally went wrong between them. The present-day story, with Ama ultra-competently finding solutions to all of the wealthy brides' many demands, even being sabotaged by her former boss, is a lot of fun too, although it becomes painfully clear that Ama needs a ton of therapy. She is far too much of a workaholic, and then there are all the commitment issues because of her mom's serial monogamy. I would have liked there to be some kind of acknowledgment that at some point, after the story's end, she would deal with some of these issues, to make sure she doesn't get cold feet and hurt poor Elliot again.

I know Ms. Soto has another romance coming out in the summer of 2024, but nothing about what it will be about. I hope she at some point in the future writes a book about Ama's beautiful and funny photographer stepsister, because she seems like she would be a great heroine. 

Judging a book by its cover: The US cover for this makes it seem like Reylo fan fiction because the guy on the cover is yet another Adam Driver look-alike. The UK cover has both characters looking far too cutesy (although Ama is described as looking a lot like a teenager). I don't think either cover really fits the book very well. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR15 Book 76: "Kindred in Death" by J.D. Robb

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

Spoiler warning! This is book 29 in the series, it's not necessarily the best place to start.

Eve Dallas has a couple of days off due to a national holiday and is planning on spending it with her gajillionaire husband Roarke. But murder doesn't take days off, and when Eve is specifically requested to lead a case, she neither can nor wants to refuse. A newly promoted police captain whom Eve has worked with in the past returned home from a weekend away with his wife to find their teenage daughter tied up, sexually violated, and brutally murdered in her own bed. The crime is an especially gruesome one, and the abuse and violence cannot help but remind Eve of her own dark past. 

The security at the captain's house was state of the art, and his daughter, while innocent in many ways, was also the daughter of a cop, so didn't trust easily. She wouldn't have let a stranger into the house, yet as far as her parents knew, she didn't have a boyfriend and would never have arranged to have a party or similar while they were away. It's not an easy thing to track down a murder suspect, let alone figure out the motive for such a gruesome crime. After another young woman, a realtor is found similarly murdered in an apartment she was showing to a potential buyer, the clues start to add up, and while the murderer might think he's clever and untraceable, Eve Dallas and her team aren't going to rest until they track him down and deliver justice to the grieving families. 

There's also a subplot with Eve's friend Louise getting married and her being completely puzzled by the many duties she's supposed to perform as the matron of honour. Thankfully, she has the trusty Peabody to assist her, both with professional duties and to navigate tricky social situations she doesn't entirely understand.

It's been years since I read an In Death book, but since they're basically like self-contained episodes of a familiar police procedural series, it wasn't exactly difficult to slip back into the series. Even if I only vaguely remember some of the characters mentioned, as a reader, you've given enough information to be able to follow along. 

It wasn't like I liked reading about bad things happening to children even before I had one of my own, but since I became a mother, I tend to react very badly to children in peril. The first victim in this story is only sixteen, and more pertinently, is her parents' only child. I fight the anxiety of something bad happening to my little boy all the time, and reading about a couple losing their only daughter was difficult. One of the reasons I've not read as many mystery and suspense novels in the past decade or so is that I just cannot emotionally deal with the sort of harrowing crimes that are often depicted in these novels, whether they involve children or not. It seems like the victims are predominantly women, and that there may be sexual violence involved, which is just deeply depressing to read about.

Nevertheless, it was fun to revisit the futuristic world of Robb's future New York (even though I find it highly implausible that the soft drink of choice in the future will be Pepsi), and since I'm planning on mood reading a lot more next year, I'll probably read a few more of them. 

Judging a book by its cover: Obviously, considering how long J.D. Robb/Nora Roberts has been writing these books, they've had a number of cover redesigns over the years. The one I read had the block of a solid colour on top - in this case a delicate yellow, not sure if it is a good fit considering the horrible crimes committed in the book - and a series of images that are connected to the plot in some way on the bottom. Apart from the running woman (the first victim liked to run in the park), I'm not sure what the ones here are supposed to represent. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR15 Book 54: "Four Weddings to Fall in Love" by Jackie Lau

Page count: 235 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Max Mok meets Kim Sun at a wedding and is smitten with her from the first. She clearly likes him enough to invite him to her hotel room after the reception, but Max isn't really used to one-night-stands and the encounter doesn't really go very well. Kim is left unsatisfied and Max is mortified. At least they're unlikely to ever have to meet again, to relive the awkwardness.

Except it turns out that Kim and her family are close friends with Max' cousins, three of whom are getting married later in the summer, and Max and Kim will keep being thrown together, by fate and meddling family members. Can Max persuade Kim that he deserves another chance, both in the bedroom and possibly as a longer-term partner?

It's quite refreshing to have a hero who's not super confident and a smooth and charming ladies man who always delivers in the bedroom. I suspect more people have slightly underwhelming first encounters, especially if, like in Max and Kim's situation, they had vastly different expectations to how the night was going to go and neither felt comfortable enough with the other to actually talk about what they wanted and needed. A lot of the things Kim really wants from a lover were things that Max' previous girlfriend didn't like, and Kim didn't actually speak up about the fact that Max left her unsatisfied, but rather rolled over and pretended to be asleep.

Rather than being oblivious, Max is very willing to admit his mistakes and absolutely wants to prove himself to Kim and learn what she wants and needs. Once again, a vulnerable and dedicated hero is refreshing, and the reader really roots for Max to get Kim to forgive him.

Kim wants to settle for one-night stands and casual sex because she was badly burned by previous relationships. Her previous boyfriend had a very nosy, overbearing, and critical mother, and never defended Kim in disagreements. It left Kim feeling abandoned and unappreciated, and since she seems to always end up with men who choose their family over her, she's pretty much decided to stay unattached from now on. She likes Max, but the fact that he has a large family and seems close to his parents makes her worried she's just going to end up repeating her destructive pattern.

Max, on the other hand, broke up with his last girlfriend once he realised that she didn't really love or desire him, he was just a convenient partner she could settle down with. He comes to understand Kim's misgivings, but doesn't really initially have the confidence to believe someone as great as her would ever even consider him as a long-term partner.

Jackie Lau doesn't really do insta-love romances. Her characters have flaws and insecurities and usually have to work with their love interest to find out how their happy ever after is going to look. Even when they don't knock my socks off, they are always good reads. In this one, there is clearly some setup for future novels, but Max' family are fun supporting characters and I am looking forward to seeing which other weddings the Moks will be involved in.

This was an ARC that I received from the author. It has not affected my opinions or swayed me in any way, although I will say that I also pre-ordered the book and paid for a copy with my own money, because Jackie Lau is a worthy auto-buy contender. 

Judging a book by its cover: I'm a member of a Facebook group in which Ms. Lau is also a member. There was a preview of completely different cover art for this book (I think it may have been AI generated). I don't entirely remember what it looked like, but this cover is so much better, and really simple, yet fun. I love the sparkly shoe and the discarded tie. The image is playful. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR15 Book 22: "It Takes Two" by Jenny Holiday

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 4 stars

15-word review: Bridesmaid Wendy keeps hooking up with former crush Noah, who’s the brother of the bride.

Wendy's best friend Jane (from One and Only) is getting married, and she's delighted to be asked to be the maid of honour. Unfortunately, the best man is the bride's older brother, Noah, who Wendy nursed a crush on for pretty much her entire adolescence until he broke her heart by standing her up at the prom. She has spent most of her adult life going on strategic trips to avoid spending time with Jane when she knew Noah was around, but now she's going to have to spend quite a lot of time in his company and it has her on edge. Determined to not show him how much he still affects her, Wendy challenges him to a "friendly" competition, about making the most memorable bachelor or bachelorette party. 

Since Wendy spent almost all of her time at their house growing up, Noah is very comfortable in her presence. His sister's friend is all grown up now, however, and initially, he feels almost guilty at how much she's now affecting him. She also seems to go out of her way to either avoid him entirely or snarkily disagree with him. As they are both trained lawyers, they can certainly both dish it out verbally, but the closer his sister's wedding they get, the more he seems to forget that Wendy was his sister's childhood companion because he can't stop thinking about how much he wants to kiss her. 

The major obstacles in the path of Wendy and Noah's HEA are Wendy's reluctance to ever let herself be vulnerable around him again and both of them having to get over their past relationship, where Wendy spent so much time with Jane that Noah came to see them both as little sisters. While Wendy nursed her crush for years, Noah was so busy working part-time jobs to help support his family after his father's untimely death and to cover for his grieving mother's depression that he didn't really have time to think about romance. A few years older than Wendy and Jane, as an older teen that age difference was great enough that he never really considered Wendy as a potential love interest. Now that they're both adults, however, the age difference is negligible, and really spending time with her makes him see her in an entirely new (and much more desirable) light.

I liked this one better than Jane's book, where I felt that the ending got a bit silly and the obstacles put in the way of the couple's HEA were a bit forced. Jane and Cameron make for fun supporting characters in this one, though, and it was nice to see them in a different light than in their own book. 

Judging a book by its cover: While the current trend of cartoony romance covers can be exasperating and make the books seem overly cutesy, I'm not sure I miss having photos of actual people on the covers either, as they so rarely match the images I have in my head. Neither of these cover models look anything like I pictured Wendy and Noah. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR15 Book 15: "The Worst Best Man" by Mia Sosa

Page count: 368 pages

Rating: 4 stars

When wedding planner Carolina "Lina" Santos was mere moments from her own wedding, the best man, the groom's younger brother came to tell her that his brother had cold feet and would not be showing up to the ceremony. Since that moment, Lina has kept a very tight check on her emotions and is now proud of her reputation as trusted, efficient, and very unflappable  She obviously doesn't want anyone to know about her own wedding disaster a few years back.  So it's not all that surprising that she panics a bit, when offered a very lucrative and potentially life-changing opportunity, and finds herself face to face with her former fiancée and his brother, the best man. She lies and claims never to have met either of the men before, and agrees to work with Max Hartley (the best man, she really can't even contemplate having to work with her ex) for the next few weeks. 

Max was looking forward to a chance to really show the client (the managing director of a very successful hotel chain) that he is better at marketing and promotion than his brother. For years now, Max has felt like he's basically doing all the work, with his brother keeps getting most of the credit, since their boss, who also happens to be their mother (no, it's not a good look), keeps insisting that they work together. So when their client insisted that she wanted two teams, with each of the brothers working separately to prepare a presentation with different wedding planners, it should have been Max' sure win. Except the person he has to work with to land the deal that might secure his career, is a woman who (quite rightly) hates him. 

Lina starts out determined to make Max' life difficult, but he seems to so gamely accept that it's her due to gently torment and blame him, and before long, she can't really make herself stay too angry with him. Once she discovers that Max isn't exactly his brother's biggest fan and that he feels awful about possibly having influenced his brother into jilting Lena, she tries her best to make their partnership work. Of course, the more time they spend together, the more their chemistry sizzles. Of course, Lena is determined to stay single, and she certainly has no plans to ever fall for a Hartley again, while Max, for all the attraction he feels towards Lena, can't forget that she was with his brother first, and can't stand the idea of being in his brother's shadow.  

After a promising start to my reviewing year, I'm now back trying to write reviews for books I read several months ago. Since reading this book, I've also read a LOT of romances, nearly all of them contemporary, so it can be a bit tricky to keep the various characters and plot lines straight in my head. This book purported to be about enemies to lovers (which is one of my favourite romance tropes), and while starting out, Lina absolutely considers both Max and his brother (I can't remember his name, and I certainly can't be bothered to look it up now - he's just the weaselly ex) her enemies. Max, on the other hand, always sort of liked Lina, and doesn't even blame her for her rather impulsive actions and pranks at the start of their partnership. Of course, he has a whole host of complicated feelings about his brother, so finding said brother's ex irresistibly attractive is a problem that he tries manfully to deal with until his and Lina's pants feelings take over and they can't keep their mouths and hands off each other anymore. 

What I remember liking:

- Lina's support network - her assistant and her family. They were fun and protective but never went too far.

- Lina and Max, separately and together. They feel like fully-rounded characters and the build-up of their relationship was good.

- The competence porn aspect. Lina and Max are forced to work together on a presentation that is extremely important to both of them. They have to set aside their differences and any old grudges because neither of them can afford for the other one to half-ass it. They are both dedicated to their work and good at what they do.

What I didn't like:

- Max' brother, Lina's ex. I get that Ms. Sosa possibly needed him to be extra weaselly so that there was no doubt that Lina wouldn't have any lingering feelings about him, and his actions would also cause Max to see that he wouldn't be overstepping by entering into a relationship with Lina - but the character didn't really work for me.

- I think I was annoyed at whatever third act obstacle that appeared in the path of our lovers' HEA, but having read so many romances in the past few months, I'm not entirely clear on the details of said complications.

This was a fun book that had been on my TBR for quite some time. I'm happy a couple of reading challenges finally gave me the push to read it. Ms Sosa has apparently written a follow up novel about Lina's cousin, involving another wedding. Not sure I liked this enough to check that out unless I find it in a sale, though. The premise doesn't sound as interesting.

Judging a book by its cover: Of course, it's another cartoony cover, that's just how romances look nowadays. At least this one is rather playful and funny. It definitely caught my eye and made me interested in the book in the first place. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.